62% of white men voted for Romney...

...while Obama won 35% of the white male vote, which is comparable with the total Latino vote that Republican presidential candidates have been getting in recent years.

Why is this important?

It is important because the gender and racial gaps in American elections have not always been this stark. A half a century ago, both political parties got a relatively similar distribution of votes when it came to race and gender. Economic class, occupation, and region tended to have more of an impact on how people voted.

The gender and racial gaps really both began to pick up in the 1980s, with the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency. While majorities of both men and women voted for Reagan in 1984, men (mainly white men) gave a much more substantial majority to Reagan than women (white and non-white). Reagan was not popular, of course, among the black community, regardless of gender.

The "Gender gap" has increased in recent years. But it's not that women are necessarily moving into the Democratic Party (as a group, women have remained roughly stable in terms of political preference in national elections over the past two decades). It's that men, specifically white men, have left the Democratic Party in large numbers.

Are there legitimate reasons for why so many white men have left the Democratic Party? Or is there something else at work here?

1. aren't most of them in the South ? where the gap is even higher than 62 percent

but there were states where Obama won the white vote but they were mostly blue states like in the northeast and west coast.

i would be interested in the numbers when it comes to the ages of the white male vote. i think among the older groups the vote is much more heavily towards republicans while as you go younger it tends to be less so.

will those younger white males who vote dem move republican as they get older ?

39. 90 per cent of white voters (95% of white men) in Mississippi voted for Romney.

Interesting Australian look at diversity among US whites: ‘Southern White’ as an ethnicity

‘Southern White’ as an ethnicity

A while ago, I posted about the supposed capture of the ‘white working class’ by Republicans, pointing out that the term was being used to refer to those with less than college education. On more traditional measures of class, such as income, the Democrats do much better, though still getting only about half the vote.

In response to this post a number of commenters pointed out that the data was not disaggregated by region, and that the South was anomalous. A couple of things I’ve seen recently support this. Here’s Charles Blow, reporting that 90 per cent of white voters in Mississippi supported Romney. Kevin Drum observes that Obama won about 49 percent of the white vote outside the South and 27 percent of the white vote in the South.

It strikes me that the best way to understand the distinctive characteristics of US voting patterns is to to treat “Southern White ” as an ethnicity, like Hispanic. With that classification each of the major parties becomes an coalition between a solid bloc vote from an ethnic minority and around half the votes of the “non-Southern white” ethnic majority, which is more likely to vote on class lines. The question then is which ethnic/class coalition is bigger. As in other countries, voting for the more rightwing party is correlated, though not perfectly with higher incomes and (conditional on income) lower education, and to shift according to broader ideological movements.

In the meantime, the demographic trends are favorable. The ethnic population balance is shifting from White Southerners to Blacks, Hispanics and Asians. So, as long as this alignment remains stable and the Democrats continue to gain ground with younger voters in general, the odds shift in their favor.

24. +1!!!!

3. White men have been leaving the Democratic Party since the 1960s...

It's nothing unusual. Obama is only -2 from where Kerry was in 2004 (he won 37% of the white vote). So, this has been a slow bleed. I don't know if a Democrat has won the white male vote at any point in recent history - and that includes Bill Clinton. In '92, he won only 39% of the overall white vote - which is likely to be smaller when you break it down via gender, since he barely edged out Bush with 41% of the male vote in '92. In '96, Clinton won only 38% of the white male vote, with Dole carrying 49% and Perot 11%. So, the numbers aren't that different over the years.

2012: Obama won only 35% of the white male vote.
2008: Obama won only 41% of the white male vote - the best of any Democrat the last thirty-years.
2004: Kerry won only 37% of the white male vote.
2000: Gore won only 36% of the white male vote.
1996: Clinton won only 38% of the white male vote.

So, the numbers have generally stayed the same - outside '08 when Obama managed 41%. Granted, Obama's numbers are smaller than any other candidate, but only a point worse than Al Gore in '00. It's been a long time coming, my friend.

23. I have been in situations where men have tried to dispute the qualifications of women,

even when the women were the most qualified candidates. None of the detractors prevailed and prevented a qualified women from moving up. There is definitely fear out there among some men. But as you wisely observed, none of those men are widely regarded as competent, IMO.

8. The problem is not with the Democratic Party

We win in the new America. If white men have become more conservative or find common cause with Republicans, I'm not going to waste time catering to them.

Many have left the Democratic party because they bemoan the loss of white privilege. They are used to preferential treatment, and are angry that they have lost some of it.

I take the above information as a reminder of who the Democratic party is: It is women, men of color, and a minority of white men. I am not willing to put our interests aside to cater to those who feel besieged by demographic changes.

10. Exactly it was a Democratic win not loss --not important to me what the losers did or why

I take the above information as a reminder of who the Democratic party is: It is women, men of color, and a minority of white men. I am not willing to put our interests aside to cater to those who feel besieged by demographic changes.

28. You're are right. The problem is more prevalent among older White men. If asked why, they

can't come up with a rational reason. They make allusions about women and minorities being favored, even when evidence says favoritism definitely isn't happening. I for one look forward to the future. When I look at younger men and women, I think of what their enormous potential is when they don't have to operate under the racial and gender burdens that impacted generations before mine and to a meaningful extent, my own age group.

12. He did better in 2008.

Barack Obama, who will be the nation’s first African-American president, won the largest share of white support of any Democrat in a two-man race since 1976 amid a backdrop of economic anxiety unseen in at least a quarter-century, according to exit polls by The Associated Press and the major television networks.

The Illinois senator won 43 percent of white voters, 4 percentage points below Carter’s performance in 1976 and equal to what Bill Clinton won in the three-man race of 1996. Republican John McCain won 55 percent of the white vote.

Obama performed slightly worse with white women, 39 percent of voters, than Al Gore did in 2000. McCain won the votes of white women, 53 to 46 percent, perhaps an indication of the historical candidacy of his running mate, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska.

Obama compensated for the drop-off in white female support with the strong 41 percent support from white men. No Democrat since Carter had until Tuesday’s election earned more than 38 percent of the white male vote.

13. What's the breakdown by state? That may tell you more.

The Republicans have spent the last 30 years (heck, the last 50, but Reagan added rocket boosters to it) stoking racial and gender resentments and fanned the "culture wars". They've used it as a recruiting tool, first to break up the New Deal coalition among Democrats and then to push the agenda of "movement conservatives".

Meanwhile, in many areas Democrats have been letting ground organization atrophy, something Howard Dean started trying to reverse with the 50-state strategy. And the need/desire for big-donor money for campaigns sent the party leadership in a so-called "pro-business" direction, which muzzled or quashed the sort of bread-and-butter economic issues that could appeal to a wide swath of white men when other issues didn't.

Or in fewer words, the Republicans recruited white men (in the worst way), while the Democrats didn't really do much to counter it.

25. JHB you have pegged it!

I'm shocked by how many people are convinced to vote against there own self interest.
Today I complimented a man wearing a 47% sweatshirt I said I get the reference, he said people rarely do.
The country really dodged the bullet when Romney wasn't elected,I don't know what will ever wake up working class white Americans,

31. Nationwide, maybe. But given that 80+ percent of Whites in some southern states

voted for Romney, it stands to reason that even more than 80% of the White men in those states voted for Romney. In the Northeast and far West, the splits were more even between White men that voted for President Obama and those that voted for Romney. The southern White male vote brought up Romney's percentage and made White men in other parts of the country look bad.

19. Same

18. My armchair analysis:

Over the past 30+ years, many white males (good liberal white DU non-female people: please note I said "many"), feeling their power and prestige in jeopardy, want to assert their ever-more flaccid manhood by voting for the tough "Daddy" party that will show those uppity wimmenfolk and coloredfolk what's what. Hate radio, Fox News, and the corporate media have done a good job of painting those in favor of a fair society, good public education, a clean environment and universal healthcare as weak and unmanly. A good percentage of white males are stupid enough and desperate enough to buy into the mythology.

20. I'm part of a really stupid demographic. n/t

27. In real life...

...when I do introduce politics or it comes up, I've never met any non-Jewish/Muslim white man who was at all liberal. I live in northern NJ, and they universally, if they read a newspaper at all, read the NY Post and parrot its editorial outlook. That paper is owned by Murdoch, if you're not familiar with it. Think Fox in tabloid format. I know from watching TV that there are, in fact, Christian white men who are liberal. I've just never actually met one in person.
Women are another story.

33. Strategists care. It would be great to get more men onboard.

35. I agree. We win when we have put thought into our policy prescriptions and clearly

state what those policies should be. An increasing number of americans are questioning the idea that we are all on our own and that society doesn't matter much. My closest friends are all liberals, they are to the left of my moderate-left politics, but they are people who I trust.

37. Am appalled of the 62% of white males who voted for der Mittens except for

those who: are or near to the 1%; support the whole of the Ryan budget which would bludgeon the social safety net; are anti-abortion or gun nuts; are racists; are severely mentally deficient; are homophobic; or are eaten up with hate in general. The other white males who voted for der Mittens are total idiots imo. Hopefully the aforementioned groups don't comprise 62% of voting white males, hopefully most of the 62% are just total idiots, but that would be sad too.

40. The economy doesn't have to be a zero sum game but it has been for the 99% since 1970 or so

White men perceive with some justification that economic gains by other segments of society have been matched by economic losses on the part of their particular demographic. A young white guy in 1970 could support himself or a family on something like a manufacturing or construction job, that's far less true today, manufacturing has largely offshored and construction jobs for white males have been sorely hit by the influx of undocumented workers.

Of course the fact that those losses are largely due to the actions of the 1% which is overwhelmingly white, older and male escapes a great many of my fellow older white males.

The right has done a superb job of propagandizing white males and particularly older ones and the Democrats mostly went along for the ride, any Democrat who really spoke up about economic injustice in America was shunned by the party. (by economic justice I mean the 1% vs the 99%, nothing racial)

A really healthy economy would do a lot to bring the white males back to the Democrats, that's why the Republicans are fighting so incredibly hard to make sure it doesn't happen. Getting the really healthy economy also isn't the huge priority it should be for Democrats because they would have to go against some of their biggest campaign contributors to do what's actually needed.